With an impressive Retina display and quad-core graphics based on an A5X processor, Apple believes its new iPad will soon be on the “must have” list of every passionate gamer. The new tablet has indeed caught the eye of the video game industry, and developers are already envisioning graphics intensive action games such as “Call of Duty” rather than light games such as “Farmville.”

According to Epic Games and Namco Bandai, the new iPad’s quad-core graphics chip has great potential and can provide a very impressive and immersive gaming experience.

Executives in the gaming industry are working on ways to bring so-called hardcore games with intensive graphics to the iPad. Up to now, more than 55 million iPads have been sold, including the 15.43 million sold last quarter. With such impressive sales, the iPad is quickly catching up to the gaming consoles – the Xbox 360 sold 65 million units and the PlayStation 3 has sold 62 million units. The user base is increasingly growing, and developers aim to see their games played on as many devices as possible.

According to Epic Games president Mike Capps, the new iPad has more memory and better screen resolution than both Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation. Capps added that he is trying to get Sony and Microsoft to build more powerful devices in order to keep up.

Moreover, the executive believes that a Bluetooth controller developed for the iPad would definitely be game-changing. “It is quite easy to imagine a world where an iPad is more powerful than a game console, where it wirelessly talks to your TV and wirelessly talks to your controller and becomes your new console,” said Capps.

On the other hand, it is quite difficult to imagine that gamers are ready to give up their consoles in favor of the new iPad. They might play a few games on the tablet just for the sake of it, to enjoy a new experience, but giving up gaming consoles is a bit of a far stretch. Most likely, the new iPad and the gaming consoles will happily coexist.